In the last 20 years, recycling has evolved from can and bottle store returns to a widely accepted and participated-in practice. Now, material recovery facilities sort and process recyclables, municipalities distribute special receptacles for collecting recycling, and manufactured products are marketed as recycled in order to gain competitive advantage.
In the United States alone, 33% of waste is recycled, which corresponds to over 80 million tons of waste. Daily, this accounts for over 1.5 pounds of recycled waste per person per day.
Despite widespread recycling, it can be confusing to would-be recyclers because different geographic areas handle waste materials differently. Some areas recycle certain plastics but not others. Some accept all recyclable materials in a single stream and sort them for later processing. Some require that certain recycled products be separated from others. Some exclude specific products from being recycled.
There are a lot of recycling rules and if a recycler is familiar with the material rules, a recycler only knows the recycling rules for their own town. Thus, when they approach a recycling receptacle in a public place, they face a confusing choice because not every recycling receptacle has a descriptive label beyond “recycling.” And even those that are labeled are often just labeled with a graphic of a bottle or newspaper, with no differentiator between other types of recyclable materials. The would-be recycler may not know if the receptacle accepts glass or plastic, or whether it accepts clear plastic or pigmented. The answers to those questions depend on local recycling regulations and existing recycling facilities.
The current apparatus seeks to solve these problems in an easy-to-use and straightforward way.